this post was submitted on 02 May 2024
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So for all people that are on the fence about switching to Linux: Here's a sort of review and starter guide from a guy who switched to Mint about 4 weeks ago.
Are you someone who mostly plays non-competetive games (games without anticheat) and browse the web? You'll probably have a hassle free life on Linux. Steam's Proton layer does a lot of heavily lifting. Even if games are not officially supported. Turn the compatability on in the steam settings.
If you play VR or competetive games, it's a different story. VR is dependant on the headset. I unfortunately have all Oculus Headsets, which there is no good controller support for right now from the open source community. Anticheat simply doesnt work on Linux.
Design software From what I've read, the affinity suite now can be used through Wine (a program that lets you use windows apps on Linux) However, from my time with Wine, it is hit and miss. One update from either the application or Wine can break everything. So it is not reliable, unless you freeze all updates from both the application and Wine. Wine can be great (working out of the box) but also the biggest pain in the ass with hours of debugging. Stay away if you dislike troubleshooting.
Inkscape can be an alternative to Illustrator if you don't do heavy design work.
I haven't touched Gimp for about 6 years (used to be my main editor) but when I switched to photoshop it qas no competition. Don't know what the state of Gimp is now, will try it over the coming year.
music software Cubase or any of steinbergs plugins outright will not work on Linux (unfortunately my main DAW) However, I will probably switch to Bitwig (native Linux), which looks really promising. I got some VSTs working through Wine (all arturia stuff works great) but have had hours of troubleshooting without luck with others. Use Yabridge as a vstlink for windows VSTs. If you're a professional musician with thousands of dollars in plugins, I'd be hestitant to switch to Linux. You'll be dependant on Wine a lot, which is kind of a pain to rely on for professional use.
overall tips Might be a bit controversial, but if you're a novice: don't dump all the solutions you find online in your terminal. Actually, try to use the machine as much as possible like you normally would on Windows, unless you want to do Terminal stuff. If you dislike terminals, you'll only be frustrated by all the terminal advice people give you, which might even break stuff on your machine.
Try to download .deb packages from the official sources.++ Software center on Mint is great, but will moatly be outdated or flatpacks. Flatpacks can work, but I've had many issues with permissions and flatpacks (like an arduino flatpack that didn't give permission to use the USB port....)
Welp, I'm out of time, so I'll just randomly stop my reviewish/comment here
Losing Ableton and all my VSTs are dealbreakers with Linux for me. Would be fine with the games I play, being all mostly single player indies. I could relearn a new video editing software, and I assume Citrix will work fine for all my work programs, but maaaan I’m not losing my favorite VSTs.
Lack of Ableton Live support is also why I probably won't switch to Linux. Even though years ago I used to dual boot Ubuntu and quite liked it as an OS, the lack of DAW support is the real deal breaker for me too. Ableton Live is just too good and I know it too well to switch away from it.
I feel you man. I've finally used Cubase enough to get proficiently fast at editing stuff, and I can't get it to work on Mint. It is quite the dilemma. From what I've seen from Bitwig, I still might switch though. It looks a lot like Ableton, but I much prefer Bitwig's UI. And my most used plugins (arturia stuff) happens to run without any hassle on Wine (for now).
Still, I'll probably keep dual booting for a while. I have so many Cubase projects backed up that I don't feel like converting all to Bitwig projects.
@[email protected] @[email protected] - you might want to take a close look at Bitwig. It's a top-notch DAW developed by former Ableton developers. I hear it's fairly similar workflow to Ableton, but also that it's better in certain ways. This is without even taking into consideration that Bitwig supports Linux. I don't have any association with Bitwig, don't even own it (yet?), but just wanted to let you know.
I think I've heard that some VST support may be tricky though. I could be misremembering, but also worth researching.
Nice to know, but it’ll really come down to VST support. I can relearn a new DAW, but I can’t magic up new libraries. I also don’t really wanna have to learn futzing with Linux when I have enough hobbies. As much as windows sucks, it’s convenient that their product supports everything I want out of the box. Once a Linux distro can do the same for my needs, I’m all in.
No problem, I understand.